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yes its a GPS with spot included. It also allows text messaging via satellite on the fly. It has an integrated keypad in the gps. Seemed like a cheaper alternative than sat phone and it also has tracking which is nice when I'm alone. Bought on amazon for 415 service for spot will be 100 a year and tracking 50 a year and messages are basically .50 a piece. Not cheap but a sat phone is about 400 a year to roll minutes over and it offers no tracking or SOS features. Should arrive today may take a few days to figure it out. Ill give a report. Mainly wife said if im gonna be snow machining alone anymore that I needed to have one. Review on amazon have been generally good, only out for about a month it is the latest offering from SPOT.

So far I like the GPS. There are a few things that were a bit of a let down but all in all I like it. The maps are very similar to the delorme gazzetter topo maps. The Topo 9.0 is a pretty neat program that allows for some route planning that you can then import into your gps. I especially like that it is a 3D map program so it gives you a little more perspective on elevations. I have not used it in the field as intended, for snowmachining yet.

The things that I did not like about it.
The aerial photographs that you can import into the GPS that I was looking forward too..... no Alaska photos
No super high def maps available except Anchorage city proper.
Have not looked at the nautical maps yet

The good things
The maps do seem better than the garmin maps.
The tracker works well and is a very slick interface with the GPS
The custom texting via sat is nice but you can also have 20 preset messages that you can actually see in the field.
The wife is happy so that is all that really matters.
The geocaching features are great family fun and easy to use.
I put a 32 GB memory card and it has 3GB on board memory, so if they ever allow for aerial photos I can put them on easily

I'll write more when I put it to better use in the cold and tougher conditions.

I've had Magellans, Garmins and a Delorme PN-20. I love my Delorme, it's what I use now. When I do upgrade, I plan to upgrade to the PN-60 w/ SPOT. One of the things I like best about the Delorme is I download every trip to my PC and save all my maps, tracks, and waypoints. You can do that with the other ones too, but Delorme is just so easy.

"If snowmachiners would adopt the habits of riding one at a time and not parking at the base of avalanche prone slopes, the number of fatalities would likely be whittled by at least a third, if not by half." ~ Jill Fredston, in the book Snowstruck, In The Grip Of Avalanches.

i talked to them and sent it back for repairs that they said would take up to 3 months, because there was a large bad batch of the first ones that came out! just my luck! now i aint go no gps tell they get it dont and send it back to me!!!!

So first snowmachine trip with the Spot tracker. I learned some pretty significant limitations of this device which is good to know. Tracking is very spotty in the trees or when behind any topography to the south. I am still playing with it but I found that if you do not have a pretty good view of the southern sky you probably are not going to get a signal out. Anytime I got up on a ridge or a lake with views of the sky I would get a signal out. The good news is that in many places in Alaska you are not in thick trees like around Talkeetna. I am going to check but I am thinking if you cannot get a tracking signal out you probably cannot get an SOS signal out. The lit says that you need 3 sats to get a fix on your signal. Maybe the SOS only needs one sat to get the ball rolling, like I said I am going to check it out.

I think these unit really shine for the pilots or in more open areas. They work like a champ in an airplane.

It was the aerial photos that I was looking for. That is too bad, I was hoping they would at least have the same as Google's aerials. For work I always have my GPS, a USGS Topo and an aerial of the land I am looking at. It would love to be able to have one map with all three layers. I look forward to somemore updates.

Are you talking about the Spot tracking or the gps's internal tracking. Do you keep it in you pocket or in the open on your sled? I know my garmin tracks are spotty when I used to keep it in my pocket. Once I mounted it on my bars with a RAM mount I get great tracks now even in the Willow backwoods and had great tracking all the way to Nome.

I don't really know how the GPS was tracking when I was riding it was in my pocket. On the way to the cabin I kept the GPS paired to the spot to see how that worked. The 10 miles to the cabin I had (1) hit on the spot tracking. So when I got to the cabin I moved it to a near by ridge and got (2) signals out and on the far side of the lake and got (1) signal to track. The GPS got a fix right away when I checked it. On the way out I did not have the GPS on because it uses batteries much more than the spot only. It seemed that It tracked about the same, (1) signal on the way out and then worked great on the road in the truck.

The biggest downside with the tracking function is that it sends a signal out only every 10 minutes. If you are in a depression or in thick trees when the 10 min mark hits you really have no way of knowing that you are not going to leave any tracks. The GPS and the spot are seperate units so I am going to try putting the spot in a different area to see if that helps reception. I am going to invest in a ram mount soon so I'll give a run down on that too.